Of Fountain Pens, Biros, and Highlighters
by premonitioner
Summary: Ichigo cringed. The drawings were crude, mostly of scowling bears and happy bunnies.'


He had finished his test long ago. He truly wondered why they gave them so much time to do them, they really weren't that hard. Actually, most were finished. And quite a few had struck up conversations, not that the teacher that was 'supervising' cared. Ichigo highly doubted he even noticed. However, since he was periodically _ignoring_ Keigo and his cries for attention (which were, after a short time, stopped with a book to the face from the teacher. He did notice them after all). Sighing, he turned in his seat, only to find that Tatsuki was talking to Inoue, thus having her back to him.

Sighing again, the rattle of a pen falling to the floor caught his attention. Picking it up, he looked to the desk behind him. The owned of the pen was looking at him expectantly, holding their hand out for the purple, bunny covered fountain pen. He handed it back to the girl, noticing that she was not one of the people chatting to their neighbour; rather, she was drawing on a sketchpad. He got a tiny "Thanks," in reply.

Wondering what sort of person brought their sketchpad in with them during their midterm exams, he rested his arms on the back of his chair, and discreetly peered at the page. Ichigo cringed. The drawings were crude, mostly of scowling bears and happy bunnies. However, the current sketch was off to the side, separated from the rest of the childish scribbles by a thin green line, which he guessed was drawn by a biro.

It looked like a flower. She had drawn three petal shapes around a small circle, the lines looking wrong, as she had been using the fountain pen to draw them, and they were sketchy and disorderly, instead of the usual neatness one expected from a fountain pen. Drawing another two petal shapes, Ichigo concluded that it was indeed a flower, although, he couldn't discern if the girl had drawn a certain species. He didn't know anything about flowers.

The girl surprised him when she fished a red biro out of her pencil case, and started going over the stark white paper that invaded the petals. If she was using a pen with running ink before, why was she now using a biro? It used the fast drying type of ink. His question was answered after she had carefully coloured inside the lines. She ran her finger over the paper, which was dented after she had leant on it to remove any white bits, and smiled the smooth paper underneath her fingertip. Ichigo blinked at her next choice of colour. She pulled out a cracked brown biro. It looked like it was about to shatter under her grip.

Now, Ichigo didn't even know that biros came with brown ink, never mind someone actually using them. He stopped her from letting the pen, touch the page that was concerned with the centre of the flower. The girl looked up at him, startled.

"Why don't you use yellow?" he asked, as she put the pen in her hand down beside the thick sketchpad. The frown that had appeared on her face softened as she flushed.

"Don't have a yellow pen." Her answer was spoken with a strange accent. He had never heard one like it before. Actually, he had never heard the girl speak before, she had only came at the start of the term, and he couldn't remember her name. It was something Kuchiko, or something of the sorts.

Ichigo reached down into his schoolbag, just as the bell rang, signalling the end of the test and the start of the lunch period. Pulling out a yellow highlighter, he dropped it on her desk as he pushed his chair back and stood up. He left the room to make his way to the cafeteria, leaving the girl staring silently at the offensive object where it had fallen onto her notebook.

* * *

When Ichigo returned from lunch, he found his highlighter sitting on his own desk. Underneath it was a torn peice of paper, upon which was the flower the girl had drawn, with a yellow center, and swirling green leaves and vines surronding it. He smiled at the paper, and turned it over. 'Thanks. Kuchiki Rukia'. Ah. Kuchik_i _Rukia. Nice name. 


End file.
